The television is killing my mother.
I don’t mean in the way that she’s being brainwashed or it’s sucking her soul from her body. The television has no power in this dynamic, it simply broadcasts what she fears the most.
Ever since he showed up, the television has been almost permanently on MSNBC. My mother’s eyes drifted far across the border to stare at a white house and the man inside.
Torture is the best word for it, she doesn’t cry I don’t know if she has before, but when I walk past there is this dark cloud hanging over her. I wonder how I’m supposed to help, but her eyes are glued to the madness that overtakes a nation. Her words seemed to be forced out of her when she asked, “how could this happen?”.
I don’t even know what to say.
I can only watch as her will to believe in the good fades and I can feel the shock every day.
Even though he is across the border and will never look my mom in the eye, he has changed her.
I can never forgive him for that.
Writing these words is therapy for me, and hopefully for her, because I don’t want to see her lose herself to the world that is falling apart slowly.
Like The Tower in a tarot deck, things fall apart to be put back together again from the ground up. Hope is the thing driving me forward even though things seem to be going wrong every day.
I want to tell my mom to switch off the television and not have its drowning voices echo throughout our small apartment. I guess I’m telling her now.
Mom,
Things are dire in ways I cannot begin to fathom. I’m sorry but I feel powerless against the television. I’m not stronger than him, but I think together we are stronger and we’ll survive whatever this is together.
The world will go back to some sense of normalcy.
Even if he remains.
The world will move without him.
Things will get better.
My promise may mean nothing, but I try to make it work.
Love Harrison.
By Swan Yue